Stonehenge Astronomically Considered: Chapter IV. The Various New-Year Days

WITH regard to the astronomical year it may be stated that each solstice and equinox has in turn in some country or another, and even in the same country at different times, been taken as the beginning of the year.

We have, then, to begin with, the following which may be called astronomical years:—

Next, if we treat the intermediate points we have found in the same way, we have the following vegetation years:—

The Viscum aureum, otherwise called Loranthus Europaeus, is a near relation of the familiar mistletoe, and in Italy grows on the oak almost exclusively. There are fifty species of Loranthus in the-Indian flora, but L. Europaeus does not occur.

In the Viscum aureum we have the "golden bough," the oak-borne Aurum frondens and Ramus aureus of Virgil; and it can easily be imagined that when the Druids reached our shores from a country which had supplied them with the Viscum aureum, this would be replaced by the V. album growing chiefly on apple trees and not on oaks; indeed, Mr. Davies, in his "Celtic Researches," tells us that the apple was the next sacred tree to the oak, and that apple orchards were planted in the vicinity of the sacred groves. The transplanting of the mistletoe from the apple to the oak tree before the mystic ceremonies began was not beyond the resources of priestcraft.

It must not be forgotten that these ceremonies took place at both solstices—once in June, when the oak was

With regard especially to the particular time of the year chosen for sun-worship and the worship of the gods and solar heroes connected with the years to which I have referred, I may add that the vague year in Egyptian chronology makes it a; very difficult matter to determine the exact Gregorian dates for the ancient Egyptian festivals, but, fortunately, there is another way of getting at them. Mr. Roland Mitchell, when compiling his valuable "Egyptian Calendar" (Luzac and Co., 1900), found that the Koptic calendar really presents to us the old Egyptian year, "which has been in use for thousands of years, and has survived all the revolutions."

Of the many festivals included in the calendar, the great Tanta fair, which is also a Mohammedan feast, "is the most important of all held in Egypt. Religion, commerce, and pleasure offer combined attractions." As many as 600,000 or 700,000 often attend this great fair, "no doubt the survival of one of the ancient Egyptian national festivals."

This last paragraph is important, as it points to ancient sun-worship, Helios being read for Elias and 179 days from May 6 bring us to November 1. So we find that the modern Turks and Armenians have the old May-November year as well as the ancient Egyptians who celebrated it in the Temple of Menu at Thebes.

The traces of the Ptah worship are not so obvious. Finally, it may be stated that the second Tanta fair occurs at the spring equinox, so that the pyramid worship can still be traced in the modern Egyptian